The influence of Bernhard Waldenfels' phenomenology on the disclosure of the theme of the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022–2025 in contemporary Ukrainian and German art

Анотація

The article explores how Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology, in particular his concepts of «intercorporeality», «shared experience» and «mutual embodiment», provides a basis for a deeper analysis of artistic practices representing the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022–2025. The aim of the article is a philosophical and cultural analysis of the influence of Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology on the disclosure of the theme of the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022–2025 in contemporary Ukrainian and German art.

Methods. An interdisciplinary approach was applied, combining social anthropology, philosophy of art, hermeneutics and art history. The key methodology of the research is phenomenology.

Results. The results of the study establish that by applying the concepts of «response to the challenge» (Antwort auf das Fremde), «shared experience», «choreography of events» and «phenomenology of the other», the study reveals how contemporary art functions as an ethical and affective form of reaction to the radical otherness of war. The article argues that Waldenfels’ phenomenology provides tools for reading artistic gestures as forms of responsibility, not just representation. The analysis covers contemporary Ukrainian exhibitions (Yermilov Center, Mystetskyi Arsenal, The Naked Room gallery) and German art initiatives (for example, «Ukraine: War and Resistance» in Berlin and «What We Didn’t See» in Dresden), which appear as new artistic contacts in search of cultural dialogue. The ability of art to function as a space of empathetic contact and affective responsibility, which allows us to empathize with the experience of war even beyond its direct geographical impact, is analyzed.

Conclusions. Visuality in contemporary art exhibitions becomes an affective zone of intersection of «I» and «you», not through identification, but through responsible coexistence. Waldenfels’s phenomenology opens up an important resource for understanding art in a transnational context. War becomes not only a political or territorial event, but a way of radically reformatting sensuality. In the dialogue between Ukrainian and German art, one can trace not only solidarity, but also the process of mutual embodiment of war in images that become common, not through direct experience, but through the ethics of responsibility and involvement. The philosophy of responsibility that emerges from Bernhard Waldenfels’s phenomenology of challenge is clearly evident in the activities of the Yermilov Center and the Municipal Gallery of Kharkiv. Through exhibition practices that combine documentary, intimacy, and social involvement, these institutions create a space for collective reflection on war. Art here appears not as a representation of suffering, but as an ethical gesture, a response to what goes beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience.